About the Sabbath day

[jschwartz]

The Seventh Day Sabbath never changed, per se. However, Sunday is the Lord’s Day, the Day we associate with the Resurrection, and that’s why Christians eventually used the day for worship. The Sabbath is the operative sign of God’s covenant with the Jewish People, and rightfully is theirs, with the dual commandment of zachor v’ shamor, remembering it and guarding it. Many in the early church held both days as sacred, evidenced in Ignatius’s letter to the Magnesians ca. 110. Later, observance of the Sabbath was seen as a legalistic/Judaizing element, and it was uprooted from mainstream Christendom. In Rabbinic Judaism, the Sabbath is seen as such a special institution between God and His people that those heathens who do keep the Sabbath are chayav mitah, i.e. worthy of a capital punishment, because it is seen as a breach of the covenant. On the other hand, a resident alien (ger toshav) may not violate shabbat, because that is akin to idolatry, and according to many rabbinic scholars, Christians have the status of resident alien.

 

[rstrats]

jschwrtz,
re: “…Sunday is the Lord’s Day, the Day we associate with the Resurrection…”

Perhaps; just so it’s understood that there isn’t any scripture that refers to the first day of the week as the Lord’s Day.

 

[jschwartz]

That’s where Tradition and church history come into play.

 

[mikekle]

Its just a rule. A discipline of the Church, which Catholics follow. I can’t imagine God cares one way or the other. If the Church switched Mass to Wednesdays it would be inconvenient, but not theologically significant, at least to me.

Thats part of the problem…practicing religion, especially christianity, is not supposed to be convenient or easy. Jesus said out lives would be extremely tough due to his name.

I see this in my parish, I know many people who attend saturday evening mass purely because they dont like getting up early on the weekend, others do it because they have other plans on sunday. plus most people here know the sat mass is usually 10-15 minutes shorter than sundays…I think a good deal of modern parishes try to make the religion something we can ‘comfortably’ live with, when really it should be the opposite.